Wednesday, November 18, 2009

National Review Caricatures

I was watching Fox News the other night and a funny commercial came on for the National Review. I guess it's a super right wing crazy magazine. The ad looked like it was made by a local TV station for 5 bucks.

But all the covers had these great caricatures!They must have a really good art director.They showed some killer caricatures of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid but I couldn't find those on the internets. If you have 'em and wanna scan 'em and send me links, I'll link back!I really admire good caricaturists.The ones that don't just copy the procedures and styles of other caricaturists.The best ones have to be super observant and set aside their prejudices of what a caricature is supposed to look like, because everyone in real life looks completely different and you have to capture the individual's style and personality to be good.I also like the caricaturists who capture the person's whole head shape, and not just wrap their individual features into a wobbly sack cloth with a random silhouette.This is not easy to do. Takes a lot of brain power.This last one is from another magazine but it's good too.

I wish more animation cartoonists applied some of the kind of thinking that caricaturists have to do in their work. I don't mean literally drawing human caricatures into cartoons. They'd be impossible to animate. No, I mean being more observant and breaking out of making cartoons based solely on other cartoons, instead of scouring the world with your eyes and brain, on the constant lookout for new things to make cartoons about and new ways to design characters that aren't just rehashes of well-known overused animation styles.

Getting your pencil to tap into your own view of the world instead of being a slave to certain habitual flicks of the wrists that always produce the same shapes and stories.

Hey again John Thanks so much for you critique! I just have a question... You said: "the contrasts are a bit toned down" Maybe I slept in the class, but I'm not sure what you by the contrasts... Can you help me out?

These are great! After scary monsters, caricatures are my favorite things to draw.

Speaking of caricatures, have you ever posted an opinion of Triplets of Belleville? It's not Disney, 3D or surface-only stylized 2D, so I'm intrigued about what you'd say to defend not liking it. (I keed, I keed!)

Yeah, truly good caricature is tough to do. Well, maybe more time consuming then tough really. I've been doing that quite a bit lately with results ranging from decent to awful. I plan to make a blog post all about it in the near future. However, a few other loose ends have to be taken care of first. I really can't wait to post it all.